In Search of Roommate...

So my current roommate is graduating with his Ph.D. this fall, and moving to Europe soon thereafter. This means that I am faced with the daunting task of replacing him in the master bedroom of the third-floor walkup we've split in lovely Watertown, Mass., since last August. There are a number of different ways one can find a new roommate. One way is to ask around at work. When work consists of a very tiny Psychology program, however, this doesn't work. Another way is to find a friend who needs a room. Unfortunately, I have few friends north of Westchester County, New York, so this option is out as well. Finally, there is Craig's List, the fall-back option of shame.

In case you've been hiding under a rock for the past half-decade, Craig's List is an online bulletin board where one can find anything from a new keyboard to a discreet foot-lover, from a room for rent to a kidney donor. In a sense, it epitomizes both the very best (extremely cheap commerce, transactions occurring seemingly at the speed of light) and the very worst (very shady, very decrepit-looking, extremely prone to Spam) of the Internet. To find a replacement roommate, I hoped that the pros of the Craig's List would far exceed the cons.

I started by posting a relatively detailed, coherent and kind rationale for why an employed, pleasant, non-pedophile human being would enjoy living at my apartment with me. I mentioned the perks of the apartment - reasonable rent and utilities, two balconies, and a spacious master bedroom - as well as its deficits - no central A/C, third-floor walk-ups promote cardiovascular health (to say the least), and let's just say those two balconies are somewhat likely to collapse in the near future (hopefully while I'm not sunbathing on mine). I was just as candid about myself. I emphasized twice that I like living in a neat apartment, because it's very important to me that my apartment remain neat. I also explained that I have a long-distance girlfriend and that I love the 26-time World Champion New York Yankees, because I don't want people to be surprised with these things down the road.

And then I waited for the replies to come to my specially-set up Google mail account. When they arrive, man are they interesting.

First of all, there is a lot of Spam mail. Here is an example of one letter I received:

I'm MR Mike Hill OF MAYLOLSTORE INC in United Kingdom.I came across your AD on Craigslist for your place to be rented out.I am interested in renting your place for my niece who will be coming to the US for some months vacation in the US. she will be staying in the place for the duration instead of an hotel due to the exhorbitant price.Please answer my following questions below:
1) I will like to know if your room will be available for 3 months starting from Match
2) I will like to have the description of the room, size, and the equipments in there to know what she will bring along when coming.
3) I will like to know the rent fee per month plus the utilities and if you require deposit.I will like to know if you accept paying the rent monthly
4) I want to know if you accept US postal money order/US Cashier's Check as a mode of payment so I can make an advance payment before her arrival that will stand as commitment.
5) Lastly, I will like to know more about you.
I will be very glad to have all this questions answered
Hope to hear from you soon
Best Regards

WTF is this? How come the extra "h" in "exorbitant" is so funny? I can't answer the second question but I'll try for the first. Apparently the scam hits after you reply to Mr. Douglass McGonigal from Devonshire-Upon-Avon. He'll next require just a small advance from you in order to get his niece to travel here from England. I would estimate that 75% of the E-mails I get are very similar to the previous one. By this, I mean that they are Spam letters written as if diction was taken from a customer service agent in India. Why can't any Internet scam artist use proper grammar, damn it? If I EVER receive an Internet scam E-mail that is written to my objective, journalistic standards, I will purposefully fall prey to it. This scam artist would deserve my money.

Some of the other E-mails I've received are funny, too. For example, Victor B. of Chris Hansen's kitchen writes: "Hi, I'm 24 years old male. Working in a consulting company. When can i come over and see the place?" My response: "Due to some problems you've been having lately with Megan's law, you are never seeing my apartment, Victor B."

Uladsislau Z. of the Island Mypos writes: "My name is Vlad, and I'am a graduate student at [name deleted] College. Do not have pets, non-smoker, have good references. Looking for a room in Watertown, area. Please let me know if the room is still available." Kind of a halting E-mail, no? Almost feels like I'm getting yelled at. Check out my response: "MUST WRITE MESSAGE STRONGLY!!!! ROOM NOT AVAILABLE, EAT BORSCHT!!!!!! Best, Fred." However, I concede that it could be kind of, sort of, maybe a little awesome to have a roommate named Vlad. Wouldn't I just have to eventually start calling the guy "The Impaler"?

Jackie D. of West Baltimore, MD, (maybe) writes (E-mail follows, in its entirety): "I am extremely interested.Please get back to be ASAP." I never reply back to Jackie D., because I know that Marlo Stanfield of "The Wire" moved on to killing people who exhibit terrible E-mail etiquette after quitting the drug game, and has already stashed her dead body in a vacant row house.

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That my posting on Craig's List resulted in a torrent of slimy, shady conversations with people shouldn't surprise you. The fact remains that I did receive a number of E-mails (that I won't post, because they're boring) that were kind, decent, and... well, "normal." In the midst of all this shit, what makes any communication normal? My girlfriend and I were talking about this on the phone last night. We decided that there is some kind of "meta"-sense that people who aren't creepy have, because in order to rise above the creepiness of Craig's List, one has to first understand how creepy it is. For example, the "normal" E-mails I received were consistently quirky and self-deprecating. They had attempts at humor (often at my expense), some of which were successful. They often mentioned explicitly how weird it is to meet with some random person, under the pretense of possibly living with them for 12 months.

Creepy people don't seem to have this sense. They just want to get laid, and/or kill me. I'm reminded of "Dexter", the Showtime TV series where the protagonist is a well-disguised serial killer. In the show, Dexter (the killer) is portrayed extremely sympathetically - oftentimes, I catch myself actually rooting for him to kill somebody. He is smart, successful, and sometimes charming, the kind of serial killer that never seems to get caught - but still, he is (very subtly) creepy. In advance, I realize that it can be a stretch to relate any TV show to real life in any meaningful way. However, I think that there is one aspect of "Dexter" which is presented so organically and clearly that it's worth mentioning. It is that, no matter how you try to cover it up, no matter how elaborate the ways you've devised to hide yourself are, you kinda are who you are. If you're the kind of person who needs to kill people, you're gonna kill people. If you need to do hard drugs, you're gonna do hard drugs. And if you feel the need to tell a prospective roommate on the phone that you're currently being evicted for not paying rent... you're never going to become my roommate.

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Finally, an awesome picture (thanks for the heads-up, Scott) from xkcd, the official web comic of Damaged, Inc. Check out the bald head, emo glasses, and goatee on the psychology dude. I know so many psychologists who look just like that: